Tagged: MLB

MORPS 2016 team projections posted below. 2015 team projections only picked 50% of the playoff teams which is better than the 2014. We definitely missed on the Kansas City Royals and their World Series win. On the positive side, we did predict playoff runs for the Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers, Pirates and Blue Jays. Our only miss in the NL was the Cubs over the Nationals. The AL is another story. In addition to the Royals, we also missed on the Astros, Rangers, and Yankees. Predicting 50% of the playoff participants isn’t bad considering the number of roster changes that happen during the course of the season. Between 2013 and 2010, MORPS team projections averaged 73%. We are hoping move in that direction this year.

This year’s team projections are as follows:

American League

2014 AL East

Wins

Losses

Toronto

90

72

Boston

83

79

Tampa Bay

81

81

Baltimore

78

84

New York

75

87

2014 AL Central

Wins

Losses

Cleveland

88

74

Detroit

83

79

Chicago

80

82

Minnesota

77

85

Kansas City

73

89

2014 AL West

Wins

Losses

Seattle

87

75

Houston

86

76

Texas

82

80

Los Angeles

78

84

Oakland

77

85

National League

2014 NL East

Wins

Losses

New York

97

65

Washington

87

75

Miami

81

81

Atlanta

67

95

Philadelphia

64

98

2014 NL Central

Wins

Losses

Chicago

92

70

Saint Louis

84

78

Pittsburgh

82

80

Cincinnati

75

87

Milwaukee

74

88

2014 NL West

Wins

Losses

Los Angeles

95

67

San Francisco

88

74

Arizona

81

81

San Diego

73

89

Colorado

71

91

The Division winners in the NL are New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles with Washington and San Francisco slipping in as the wild card teams. The division winners are certainly not a surprise nor are the wildcard teams. The American League Division winners will be Toronto, Cleveland, and Seattle with Houston as a wildcard team. Boston and Detroit will play a one game playoff to determine the last wildcard spot. Unlike the NL, MORPS predictions in the AL will be s surprise to most. USA Today has Cleveland finishing third and Seattle fourth.

While the team with the most wins don’t always do that well in the playoffs, such distinctions can’t be made with a projection system built around “Runs Created” and “Runs Allowed”. MORPS is projecting an AL championship between Cleveland and Toronto with Toronto going to the world series. In the National League it will be Los Angeles versus New York with the Mets going to the world series. MORPS projects that the New York Mets will win the series in 6 games.

Those that want more information on the projection methodology can click here.

Most opening day rosters are set which means its time for the final 2014 MORPS projections. If you’re a Braves fan, you have to be wondering why your city is cursed. First its the traffic jam to end all traffic jams. Next, it’s all your pitchers getting hit by the injury bug. I’m hoping that some minor adjustments this year will yield even better results for this year’s projections. We’ll check in October to see how the numbers mapped to real stats.

For those who play Fantasy, remember to sort your stats for your scoring system. Baseball Manager (BBM) managers should sort batters by Runs Created (RC) and pitchers by OERV. This should yield the best results for simulation leagues that use real stats for nightly scoring. Roto leagues should use the projections as presented below.

Spring Training always adds unexpected twists for projection systems. This year is no different. Injuries, position battle updates, and unexpected player transactions lead to changes in player projections. During the year, this simply leads to variance from projected player performance. During Spring Training, projection systems have a chance to make last-minute corrections to account for all these changes.

I came across an excel tool two years ago from Razzball that automated much of the draft process for ROTO leagues. I modified it with MORPS projections and added a bit more functionality. It worked well for my ROTO drafts the last two years. Thus, I decided to use it again this year. I also decided to share the modified tool this year with MORPS followers.

Take time to check the instructions page. It highlights what needs done to complete your preparation. The User Input page allows you to customize the tool for your own league, goals, etc. The only other page you will need to alter in any way is the Players page. During the draft, you update players taken on this page with a drop down team selection that uses the teams you entered on the User Input page. Players are automatically marked as taken in the dashboard by stat and the dashboard by position. This allows you to see next available players based upon position or any of the standard 5×5 roto stat categories. The War Room is where all the player draft data is consolidated together to give you a running overview of your team and the other teams in your league.

Feel free to make suggestions for improvement. Hopefully everyone else finds it as useful as I did with my own drafts.

MORPS projections are late coming this year. I’ve delivered a set of baseline projections several weeks ago. However, you’ll find that the actual projections have some drastic differences. I’m always amazed by the amount of player movement during the off season.

The Major-League Obie Role-Based Projection System (MORPS) uses four years of player performance data for all hitters. Since I started playing with Sabermetrics using Tango’s Marcel system, the first iteration of MORPS four years ago used the same formulas. After learning the basics, the batter formulas were adjusted to include the most recent four years of performance data. Adjustments were also made for player age, home ballpark data and expected playing time. The most complicated part of the system is the regression formulas. Tango provided formulas for his three year model. I had to crack open the math books to figure out how to transition the formulas to a four year model.

One of the most time consuming tasks in developing the system was determining the proper mean for player regression. If the goal was to ensure that the mean of all the projections competed favorably with end of year player means, the task would have been straight forward. However, my goal was to make the actual player projections as accurate as possible. “Role-Based” means that the player projections are regressed to position specific means. National League means are also separated from American League means.

While conducting research, I noticed that most projection systems used minor league stats as well as any available major league stats to project the future performance of young players. There are even formulas that anticipate player regression when entering the majors. The interesting thing is that Tango’s Marcel system does just as good at predicting rookie performance as other projection systems and he doesn’t use any minor league stats. Some players are great in the minors and simply can’t make the jump to the major leagues. Some players start out great, but find that major league pitchers start exploiting weaknesses they never knew they had. Others outperform all expectations. By calculating the reliability of a player’s projection using only major league data, MORPS adds a proportional dosage of a player’s positional mean to complete a rookie’s player projection. Since we are focused on individual player performance, I didn’t see the point of including all minor league stats when the results don’t seem to provide significant value. The last year of a rookies minor league or international season is included, with appropriate adjustments for competition, if no major league experience exists. While efforts have been made to adjust projections to reflect anticipated playing time, players who have a roster flag of “N” are projected using baseline projections only.

Pitching Projections

The formulas used to create pitcher projections are very similar to those that we have already discussed with batters. MORPS uses four years of data to create a pitcher projection. Adjustments are made for age, home field and anticipated role. The reliability of a projection is calculated based upon the amount of data available for a particular player. Someone with low reliability will regress more to a position specific mean than someone that has faced a lot of major league batters over the last four years.

The big difference between projecting pitchers and batters is the usage disparity between relief pitchers and starting pitchers. A good relief pitcher may face 350 batters in a season. A top end starting pitcher may pitch to 900 batters in a season. The plate appearances for position players are typically not dependent on role. A first baseman and shortstop may both have 600 plate appearances over the course of a year. Their position means will be different. First basement will typically have higher power stats while shortstops have higher speed stats. But, they are similar enough that their projections can be calculated using the same basic formulas. The disparity between relief and starting pitchers forces them to be calculated very differently. For months I struggled with pitching projections. When I finally figured out that starting pitchers and relief pitchers had to be calculated separately, everything fell in place.

MORPS 2014 projections will be ready later this week. While everyone is waiting, I thought some might enjoy reading the MORPS Team Projections for 2014. In 2013, MORPS picked 4 of the 6 division winners based upon projected wins and losses. This included Boston, Saint Louis and Detroit. Of the four teams that went to a championship series, only the Dodgers were not in the MORPS playoff projections. They missed on that projection by one whole game.

This year’s team projections are as follows:

American League

2014 AL East

Wins

Losses

New York

89

73

Toronto

89

73

Tampa Bay

87

75

Boston

78

84

Baltimore

70

92

2014 AL Central

Wins

Losses

Detroit

93

69

Kansas City

83

79

Chicago

80

82

Cleveland

78

84

Minnesota

66

96

2014 AL West

Wins

Losses

Texas

82

80

Seattle

82

80

Houston

81

81

Los Angeles

79

83

Oakland

79

83

National League

2014 NL East

Wins

Losses

Washington

85

77

Atlanta

83

79

Philadelphia

81

81

New York

79

83

Miami

75

87

2014 NL Central

Wins

Losses

Saint Louis

91

71

Milwaukee

88

74

Cincinnati

80

82

Pittsburgh

74

88

Chicago

64

98

2014 NL West

Wins

Losses

Colorado

98

64

Los Angeles

86

76

San Diego

81

81

San Francisco

77

85

Arizona

74

88

3/27/2014 update – Roster changes and injuries have helped some teams and hurt others over the course of Spring Training. The team projections have been updated to reflect current team rosters and player projections. Atlanta’s pitching injuries have dropped them in the standings and elevated the Washington Nationals to NL East Division winners for 2014. Toronto and Tampa Bay have distanced themselves from the rest of the AL pack for wild card spots. The rest of the projected division winners and wild card projections remain the same – New York, Detroit and Texas as division winners in the AL, Saint Louis and Colorado as the other NL division winners, and Milwaukee and Los Angeles with the wild card spots in the NL.

2/25/2014 Original Post – Each year the numbers surprise me because they rarely agree with the talking heads on popular sports talk shows around the country. This year is no different. Division winners this year include New York, Detroit and Texas in the AL while Atlanta, Saint Louis and Colorado will represent the NL. The wild card in the AL is going to come down to the wire. MORPS is projecting the first wild card to be Tampa Bay while the second wild card is a three-way tie between Seattle, Kansas City, and Toronto. Can you say multiple play in games – wouldn’t that be exciting. The wild card race in the NL is a little more straight forward with Milwaukee and the Dodgers distancing themselves from the rest of the pack.

Those that want more information on the projection methodology can click here.

I’ve received several emails asking about 2014 MORPS projections. My day job now includes travel which has left me less time to work on these projections. In the interest of time, I have put together a quick and dirty baseline version of 2014 MORPS projections. “What does this mean?” you may ask. Well… the short story is that the projections do not include any player team changes or role changes. I also did not error check. Will Cano’s stats go down in Seattle? Absolutely, but this set of projections have not accounted for his change in venue. You will need to take this into account if you are preparing for an early draft. Those things being said, the projection engine is the same one I automated last year. This means that the projections are still based on four years of data, positional mean regression, etc. In most cases, the numbers are fairly close to final values. Time permitting, I hope to publish a set of updated projections during Spring Training that include player roles and team changes.

Baseline 2014 MORPS Batting and Pitching projections are available in excel and PDF formats. Follow the links below to download your copy.

If you player Roto baseball, you will find the projections already sorted in Roto Rank order. If you play a more realistic version of fantasy baseball, like BBM, you will need to resort the XLS spreadsheet in RC order for batters and OERV order for pitchers.